The Digital Fix: Film

Touch of Evil (MOC) in November

Eureka Entertainment have announced the UK Blu-ray Disc release of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil as part of their Masters of Cinema Series on 14th November 2011. This film noir classic alongside Citizen Kane is often cited as the legendary director's greatest work. The film boasts an incredible cast including Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Marlene Dietrich and Orson Welles himself in one of his most iconic roles.

Touch of Evil begins with one of the most brilliant sequences in the history of cinema; and ends with one of the most brilliant final scenes ever committed to celluloid. In between unfurls a picture whose moral, sexual, racial, and aesthetic attitudes remain so radical as to cross borders established not only in 1958, but in the present age also. Yet, Touch of Evil has taken many forms. The film as released in 1958 was certainly compromised from Orson Welles' vision, but a brilliant and lengthy memo written by Welles to studio heads in 1957 – taking issue with a studio rough-cut – had some influence on a subsequent preview version shown to test audiences (and rediscovered in the mid-1970s) as well as the 1958 theatrical version. Forty years later, in 1998, Universal produced a reconstructed version of the film that takes into meticulous account the totality of Welles' memo, and ostensibly represents the version of the film that most closely adheres to his original wishes.

Three versions of Welles’ film: the 1998 reconstruction (in both 1.37:1 and 1.85:1 aspect ratios); the 1958 preview version rediscovered in the mid-1970s (in 1.85:1); and the 1958 theatrical version (in both 1.37:1 and 1.85:1).

English SDH subtitles on all versions

A host of extras presented for the first time in the UK

A lavish 56-page illustrated book containing the words of Orson Welles

— and much more.

The best prices for the standard 2-disc edition can be found on your left. The steelbook is a HMV exclusive so can only be purchased through them - Link

Additional info:

- The new blu-ray edition of Touch of Evil will be exclusively screened in a short run at the ICA, London between 28 Oct - 3 Nov . Please see box office for details